Young Boy Steals Car to Avoid Church

Poor kid.

I know the feeling. As Sunday approached, a sense of loathing would come over me and the perpetual knot in my stomach would tighten. It felt so wrong to be expected to believe what defied my own reasoning or expected to participate in silly, meaningless rituals.

Although at five years old I didn't know the word 'indoctrination', I had no trouble divining the intentions of the Sunday school teachers, ministers and other church people: to reshape my view of reality. Problem for them was that in my family insincerity, dogmatism and a controlling figure combined like a suffocating, oppressive blanket. So even at that age, I had no difficulty spotting the same phenomena elsewhere.

What a kid! Never believed in Santa Claus. Didn't like the Brownies. (Urged to flit around a circle like fairies? There's no such thing!) Sigh... Clearly in this regard I was far too rational for my own good. But by the age of five there'd been a lot of unchildlike lessons learned and whatever childhood I'd had was long gone.

As for religious indoctrination of the young, it's too much like abuse. Indeed, from my five-year-old perspective, it differed from the abuse I knew only by degree.